Despite President Donald Trump’s repeated assertions that federal immigration agents are focused on removing dangerous offenders, newly released figures suggest that tens of thousands of people arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement had no criminal history at all during the first nine months of his second term.
The University of California, Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project obtained internal records on nearly 220,000 people arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement between Jan. 20 — the day Trump was sworn in for his second term — and Oct. 15, 2025.
According to that data, which was compiled by an internal ICE office and surfaced in a lawsuit against the agency, almost one-third of those arrested during that period had no criminal record. For those with prior convictions, the database does not differentiate between low-level offenses and violent crimes.
“It contradicts what the administration has been saying about people who are convicted criminals and that they are going after the worst of the worst,” Ariel Ruiz Soto, a senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, told NBC News.
Notably, the dataset does not include arrests carried out by other federal agencies such as Border Patrol, which has also been deployed to Trump-targeted cities including Chicago, Los Angeles and Detroit during his second administration to intensify immigration enforcement efforts.
ICE and Border Patrol are both overseen by the Department of Homeland Security, but operate as separate agencies.
“That is the black box that we know nothing about,” Ruiz Soto said. “How many arrests is Border Patrol doing? How many of those are leading to removals and under what conditions?”
Last week, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem posted to X about how she and Trump, 79, were working to expel what she described as “killers, leeches, and entitlement junkies.”
“Our forefathers built this nation on blood, sweat, and the unyielding love of freedom—not for foreign invaders to slaughter our heroes, suck dry our hard-earned tax dollars, or snatch the benefits owed to AMERICANS. WE DON’T WANT THEM. NOT ONE,” Noem, 54, wrote.
The push to expand ICE arrests has come directly from the White House. In May, NBC News reported that White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller warned ICE officials that they could be fired if the agency failed to detain 3,000 migrants a day. Miller also reportedly threatened consequences for field offices that ranked in the bottom 10% of monthly arrest numbers.
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Federal law enforcement officials who spoke with NBC News said the administration’s intense focus on immigration cases has diverted attention and resources from other priorities.
“There is such a priority on making immigration arrests that it takes longer to get answers on anything else. Something that used to be resolved in a matter of days now takes weeks,” one law enforcement official told NBC.
Last month, President Trump told CBS News’ Norah O’Donnell that he supported ICE agents sometimes using forceful tactics in raids, “because you have to get the people out.”
“I think they haven’t gone far enough,” he added, claiming that “many of them are murderers” and that “many of them are people that were thrown out of their countries because they were, you know, criminals.”
Trump has also said that his administration would “work with” deported immigrants who later seek to return legally. Yet, just last week, several immigrants in Boston who were preparing to become U.S. citizens were reportedly removed from the naturalization line moments before their oath ceremony because they were from countries on a Trump-restricted list.
WGBH, a National Public Radio member station, reported that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) officials approached would-be citizens — who had already completed the lengthy process, been approved for naturalization, and were preparing to pledge allegiance to the United States — and informed them they could not proceed.
In a statement to NBC News, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson responded that the Trump administration is “making every effort to ensure individuals becoming citizens are the best of the best.”
“Citizenship is a privilege, not a right,” the spokesperson said. “We will take no chances when the future of our nation is at stake.”
